


Their Honeymoon

by Millgirl



Series: Miranda's Sabbatical [13]
Category: The Devil Wears Prada (2006)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-28
Updated: 2020-06-06
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:40:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24422920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Millgirl/pseuds/Millgirl
Summary: Miranda and Andrea are married, but they can still have fun.  They also explore some of the mysteries which emerged in Miranda's Enchanted April.  This is a transitional story taking us from the series "Miranda's Sabbatical" on to their next set of adventures.
Relationships: Miranda Priestly/Andrea Sachs
Series: Miranda's Sabbatical [13]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1490903
Comments: 23
Kudos: 82





	1. The Morning After

Andrea Priestly-Sachs woke up on the first morning of her married life and wriggled her toes against the feet next to hers. Miranda lay sleeping across her chest, as she had done nearly every night for the last ten months, but today was different. Today was special. Today was the first day of a relationship without those insecurities which come with dating, with only being a girlfriend or a fiancée and with negotiating all those tiny misunderstandings when you blend into someone else’s life. 

But she and Miranda had made it. They had declared their vows, written by each for the other, in front of the assembled company of their family and friends, and they were now one. Miranda’s vows had been typically humorous, with the dry self-deprecating reference to her stubbornness and arrogance. Andy’s had been straightforward in their love and wish to be her wife, with all that it meant. 

She was now the permanent guardian of Miranda’s heart and happiness and Miranda was hers. It would never be the same again, their life together. It could only get better from here on, one long blissful love-match. 

Then Miranda woke up. 

“Goddam it, I feel terrible,” she growled. Then, without even looking once at Andrea, she grabbed her robe, shot out of the bed, and ran into the bathroom. Andrea could hear her throwing up in the toilet for several minutes, and when she ventured to follow her, saw her beloved sitting on the bathroom floor, her head resting on the toilet-seat, with one hand trying in vain to find a face-cloth or towel. Andy knelt down beside her and passed her a rinsed face-cloth.

“My poor lamb. What brought this on? Was it too much wine last night, do you suppose? Or those snacks we brought away from the reception? Maybe the chocolate cake…”

Miranda only groaned and shook her head. “Stop it. Don’t mention food . . .” was all she managed to mutter. Then she started to look even worse and began to wretch again.

Andy, who felt absolutely fine herself, pulled Miranda’s hair back from her face and supported her as she lost what remained in her stomach, thankfully all into the toilet bowl. Andrea flushed it all away, and then held her as she leaned back against her, her eyes still shut and her body trembling.

But the worst now seemed over, at least for a while. Miranda felt much better for losing all of last night’s supper, and she could sense her temperature settling.

“So sorry, sweetie,” she said. “Not the best start to a honeymoon.”

“No need to apologise, Miri, I’m only sorry for you. Anyway, it’s not exactly the start, is it? Remember our session rolling in the hay on the way up here? And last night’s high jinks? You were in cracking form then, Madame.”

Andy took the facecloth and gently wiped Miranda’s face. Their lovely time the previous evening would live in her mind for ever. Miranda in her costume as a man about town in Fin de Ciecle Paris had been the sexiest thing on two legs, and Andy had nearly collapsed with lust. 

The hill-top forest retreat she had chosen for their few days away was a beautiful guest-house, but it had had just one drawback. It was a two hour drive from the Inn where they had been married in Provincetown, far too long for Miranda’s raging libido, which had pulled Andy into her arms a mere twenty minutes up the road. Hot and dirty sex in the Porsche had been a cosy affair, to put it mildly, but it had satisfied them both just enough to keep them happy until their arrival at the Forest Lodge. 

“Would you like some water to drink?”

“Maybe. I don’t know if I’m going to be ill again. I had better not move far from here.”

Andy ran the flannel under the cold tap and reapplied it to Miranda’s forehead. Her colour was gradually returning from ashen to normal. And eventually she allowed Andy to pull her slowly to her feet and help her move from the bathroom out into their spacious, wood-panelled bed-chamber.

“Let’s go and sit on the loungers on the balcony. I’ll give you a bowl in case you throw up again.” Andy emptied the porcelain fruit bowl on the coffee table and held it out. She also drew out a bottle of carbonated spring water from the refrigerator and poured it into a drinking glass. She pulled back the floor length curtain so the magnificent view through their picture windows was revealed. Unlocking the window latch she pushed it back and led Miranda outside into the May sunshine. 

“Here, the loungers are dry and clean. Sit here and put your feet up.”

Miranda obeyed, sat down and took the glass of water gingerly. She cautiously sipped. 

“So apart from this little complication, how does it feel to be my wife?” asked Andy with a warm look of happiness across her face. “I hope married life won’t always give you food poisoning.”

Miranda didn’t reply immediately. Her eyes shut and she leaned back meditatively against the thick striped cushions on the lounger.

“Your wife. Andrea Sachs’s wife. I do think the idea of it subconsciously might have made me sick.”

“Whaat!?”

“No, no, what I meant was, I am still just so high, Andy. I cannot believe my incredible good fortune in that you actually went through with it, my crazy scheme for us to get married. You know, part of me, I suppose, always feared you wouldn’t. I can’t quite cope with the joy. When I was a child, if anything nice happened at school, (nothing nice ever happened at home), I would get so over excited I’d be ill and throw up. Often this meant I’d miss the treat altogether. It will just take a while for my body to catch up with my head, that’s all. Bear with me, please, darling. My stomach will settle down eventually.”

Andy reached across from her lounger and took Miranda’s hand, giving her slim fingers a squeeze. They looked out together over the beautiful Massachusetts valley. It was blissfully quiet and there were some eagles circling on a thermal against the hill opposite.

“We’ll take it as slowly as you need or like. From now on, there’ll be rushing, no deadlines for another three months. We’ll just be together, married, one entity. Oh, I do love you so much, Miranda.”

“I love you too, Andy, more than I can put into words.”

So they sat in silence for the next fifteen minutes, simply letting the beauty of the natural world soak into them.

Back down in Provincetown, the activity around the Windhover Inn, dismantling marquees and generally clearing away after the party, was intense, and there was little chance of silence. Mel and Frieda, the Innkeepers, had said good bye to the last of their overnight guests and were still reeling from the sudden explosion of wedding bookings now filling their calendar for the next six months.

Nigel and Douglas were among the last to leave, having decided to do their own crazy thing and marry each other in September, just as soon as Miranda took back the editor-in-chief’s baton at Runway. Douglas was red-faced with excitement and wanted more than anything to call Andy and tell her about Nigel’s proposal, but sensible Mr Kipling managed to dissuade him.

“Not a good idea, sweetie, not on the first day of her honeymoon. I wouldn’t even text if I were you. One unexpected ping breaking their romantic idyll and Miranda will enjoy hanging you from your suspenders out of the 26th floor window.”

So Douglas had to console himself by recounting their story to Lily, who had met up with him after Miranda and Andy had made their triumphant exit the previous evening. Lily listened and was duly pleased for him, but having made up her old friendship with Andy, well, enough to feel peaceful about it anyway, her mind was really centred only on her new fellow in Auckland. So she and Douglas, over breakfast, cheerfully talked at, rather than to, each other, about how each of them was more in love than anyone else in the world. 

Nigel, older, wiser and with many previous buried heartaches in his emotional luggage, didn’t want to tell anyone just yet. He was just quietly happy, and knew that he could depend on Miranda to listen to him properly, once she was back in New York. 

As he packed away his ringmaster’s outfit, through his chalet window he watched some men clearing up elephant droppings from the side garden lawn, and reflected just how wonderful, how beautiful and how typical of her and Andy, Miranda’s wedding had turned out to be. 

He was also thinking of how its pictures would dominate the next edition of Runway. There would be enough glorious photographs of the happy couples, well the three happy couples, to fill a bumper edition. It might well be his piece de resistance and secure his reputation for creativity and stylish editing for ever.

Miranda’s extended family, the Sachs tribe, all Andy’s relatives, including numerous children, Japanese bridesmaids, and the twins themselves, had already left after breakfast, but Miranda’s old friends Gloria and Lee were still in residence, along with Andy’s gran, the indomitable Momma, or Amelia as she’d been christened eighty-four years before. Lee, who had taken a definite shine to her, had started to call her Amy, and it had stuck.

Momma approved. “Amelia sounds far too cute and curly-haired for me. I never liked it, even as a child.”

“What do you wish you’d been called?” laughed Lee.

“Frank,” replied Momma, to their surprise.

“Why?”

“We had a cowboy called Frank when I was a kid. I followed him around like a puppy and he taught me to ride and work cattle. I wanted so bad to be him, not a cissy Amelia who had to go to Sunday school with curly hair, in white socks and black patent dance shoes. I was a child when Shirley Temple was all the rage. That kid sure did have a lot to answer for, I can tell you.”

The other two women roared with laughter. Then Gloria said, “Miranda and Andy have made us realise what we’ve missed, never tying the knot. We’ve asked the girls here if they can accommodate us in October. Would you like to be one of our witnesses? We’d be honoured if you would.”

“Gee, that sounds a wonderful idea. Yes, I would deem it a privilege.”

“Fantastic, now, if you’re ready, let’s hit the road north up to Maine. We want to show you our house there. It’s on a bluff, not unlike our place you visited in Laguna, but we had better get going if we’re to make it by the end of the afternoon.”

So life at the Inn quietly settled back to normal, and Mel and Frieda were able to sit together after lunch to tackle the crossword in the local newspaper. Mel had been worried all along for Frieda, that she might not be able to cope with catering such a huge event, so she had secretly double checked all her orders and time-tabling. But she had managed magnificently, hadn’t forgotten a thing, and hadn’t once lost her cool. 

It had been a triumph, and Mel had heard from Nigel that they should expect another flurry of enquiries about wedding bookings once the July Runway magazine hit the newsstands. Her next big challenge therefore was to persuade Frieda their business needed more staff to help run it, that they couldn’t manage with just the two of them and a few local kids acting as servers any longer. To achieve this without making Frieda think she was pointing at her memory lapses and occasional panics over where she was, and what she should be doing, was daunting. 

She read out a new clue. “Four down. Grumpy old person. Ten letters. Fourth letter is M.”

“Curmudgeon,” replied Frieda, as quick as a flash. “Sounds like you, Mel, actually. But look here, my dear. If we are to take on all these weddings, you will definitely need help, especially if I am to go, how they say, completely bonkers very soon.”  
“What, no darling, you’re fine . . .”

“Mel, stop that. We both know I’m losing the marbles. So we need to find a nice young chef I can train up, and you need more cleaners. You are too old to be always changing beds anyway.”

Mel opened her mouth and left it hanging. Her guardian angel was working overtime here. Then Frieda said something even more astounding. 

“You know, all these years we have acted like we were married. But we never have made it formal. I think we should. You need to make an honest woman of me. So, go get Agatha Burrows on the phone, and arrange a date, soon, before I’m too past it to know what I’m agreeing to!” 

Miranda and Andy, who had set the trend for all this wedding fever, were temporarily experiencing the more prosaic side of married life. Miranda had lasted twenty minutes out on the sun loungers, before having to run back into the bathroom, and spent the rest of the morning closeted in there. 

Andy was persuaded to keep a safe distance away, and turned on the television to distract from the unfortunate sounds of her loved one losing even more bodily fluids. But just when she was beginning to regret dragging Miranda all the way up into this forest location, she finally emerged, having showered, washed her face and hair and cleaned her teeth, and wrapped herself up in a fresh robe. 

“I think I’m finally through it.”

“Are you sure, darling? Is there anything I can get you?”

“No, I’ll be fine. In fact, my get-up-and-go had just got up and came back to me. Can we start our honeymoon again now?”

Andy looked at her with raised eyebrows. “And what exactly do you have in mind?”

“I think I need a little bit of entertainment. Could you turn off that commercial for hideous shapewear, please?”

“Oh, and I was just about to order a lovely elastic body. Apparently it tucks in your butt and pushes up your bust at the same time. Its only drawback seems to be that you can’t breathe or pee.” 

Miranda sat down on their bed and leaned back against the headboard, arranging a pile of pillows behind her head. She tossed her head and Andy obediently switched off the TV, then stood to attention at the end of the bed. She was still in white silk pajamas and her matching silk robe, presents of course from her darling wife, who now bought nearly all of her clothes.

“Let me have a good look at the woman I’ve married. Let’s do that for starters.” 

Andrea stared at her thoughtfully, as if wondering quite where to start. She could see where this delicious game was going, and knew the rules well enough to enjoy a little teasing of her own before they began. 

“Do you want me to hand you your glasses, sweetie?” she asked gently. “Which bit of me would you like to look at first?”

Miranda felt weak, but not so weak she couldn’t deal with that piece of cheek. The ‘Do not disturb’ sign was firmly on their bedroom door, she remembered, and she had no intention of taking it down for several hours. 

“Come round here, and stand next to the bed.”

Andy stood just out of arm’s length, and licked her lips, like a cat. Her eyes shone with mischief.

“OK.” 

“What? ‘OK’? I thought you reckoned you wanted to be a writer.”

“Sorry, I meant, ‘Yes Miranda’.”

“Come here, so I can touch you.”

Andy moved a little closer. Miranda observed her sternly.

“Closer!”

“Oh no, I wasn’t born yesterday. I am not sure about your intentions.”

“My intentions are completely dishonourable.”

“In that case…”

Andy edged forward and let Miranda tug at her robe.

“Very well. That’s better. Now, you may begin to strip off your clothes for me. You’ll not be wearing them again today. But of course, you know how I love to hang around all day waiting, so don’t trouble yourself to make any special effort.”

Andrea, with a wide and wicked smile on her face, very slowly and seductively began to unbutton and remove her robe, and then slowly lowered her pyjama bottoms. Their honey-moon was getting underway at last, and she could see Miranda was getting into her “Editor-in-Chief” role-play in tip-top form.

It was going to be a long, and gloriously silly day. Married life had begun and they were going to enjoy it.


	2. Match point

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A long night, a surprise present, and a change of plan

Whenever Andrea looked back at their very short honeymoon in later years, her most intense memory was of Miranda showing a spectacular display of sexual virtuosity and stamina, especially after her morning of feeling ill and being as sick as a dog. She had made love to her for ten hours, almost without a pause from two o’clock on Sunday afternoon through to midnight.

Andy had tried to even the match by occasionally attempting to take the initiative, and gained a few service points, but Miranda’s powerful forehand and ability to pin her down, meant that it was love-forty in no time at all. So in the end she happily let Miranda take the initiative and almost swooned under the delicious kissing and very subtle finger work. 

“My wife,” breathed Miranda finally, bringing her to orgasm for the last time. “My darling wife. Do you feel properly married now?”

“Yes, this must be how the gay goddesses make love on Mount Olympus,” panted Andrea. “And yet here I am, still alive to tell the tale!”

The room was now quite dark, with a single lamp burning on a side table, and their bed was stripped back with a pile of sheets and covers tossed on the floor beside it. Miranda was lying on her stomach across Andy’s breast, which was how she liked to sleep most nights, but her hand was still provocatively tight between Andy’s legs, and Andy could feel her own clit still throbbing against the warm flesh of her lover’s warm Venus mound at the base of her thumb. Every time she clenched her legs, the hand tightened in response. There was no escape. If she wanted her to, Miranda was probably good to go for several hours more.

They were both naked. In bed they were often naked. It had become normal between them, breaking free from the annoying barriers of clothes between their bodies. For someone who enjoyed dressing up so much, it was startling to Andy, how Miranda was even more entertained by dressing down, and especially dressing down Andy as she discarded her own clothes. 

This game had started back in the terrible heatwave of the previous summer, but carried on through fall and the depths of winter, when they had sometimes resorted to an electric blanket to keep the chills away. Miranda had once torn a pair of her favorite old pajamas to shreds, blaming the cheapness of the cotton, but Andy suspected she was secretly rather proud of her prowess in destroying Andy’s sleepwear.

Today she had ordered a strip-tease as a little pick-me up, and had then laid Andy down on the bed beside her, minutely examining every square inch of her body, and giving them all a passing grade by dropping a kiss on each mouthful. From her hairline, down to her toes, this had turned Andy into a puddle of water in no time, so by the time the forensic inspection had even reached the tip of her nipples she was already begging for release, and thrashing about on the bed like a wild bird. 

To prevent her wriggling too much, (because wouldn’t that spoil the fun?) Miranda had then tied Andy’s arms up to the bedhead with her dressing-gown cord above her head for an hour or so, and changed her instrument of torture from her wicked tongue to those neat little teeth.

Andy had to chuckle at the memory of Miranda’s new found cousin at the wedding, a dental technician, asking her when they were first introduced at the reception, “How are your teeth, Miranda?” If he could see what good use she made of her pearly-whites now, she was sure he would have fainted.

But Andy knew to her cost that they were good and strong little nippers. Miranda was orally fixated on her, and enjoyed ravishing her more than any activity she could think of. Which suited Andy just fine. Where Miranda was addicted to sex with Andy, Andy was obsessed with her wife’s body in return. 

The chemical attraction between them was stronger than magnets on a fridge. And they built up a psychic connection too. Even as far back as the time they had stopped working together at Runway Miranda could summon Andy to her side by simply thinking of her, and Andy had only to dream of Miranda in her sleep, to find the unconscious woman reaching across to pull her in for a tighter cuddle.

By the time of their wedding they had been enjoying sex like sophisticated rabbits for ten months, and tying the knot between them had only seemed to make their sexual chemistry more explosive, and more outrageously enjoyable. 

Then the clock on the mantelpiece in their room gently struck midnight, and Miranda released Andy from her grasp, albeit reluctantly.

“Sleep, my darling?”

“Uhuh,” murmured Andy, “I just need to…”

“Yes. Go on then. I don’t need to. I lost all my fluids earlier.”

“You should take in some water, or you’ll be dehydrated by morning.”

She passed Miranda a bottle of Mountain Spring water, the local version of San Pellegrino, and watched her obediently swallow at least half of it, before shimmying into the bathroom. They then slid back onto the smooth white sheet together and Miranda retrieved enough of the bedclothes to pull a decent covering over them.

Andrea remembered two important things she’d wanted to do before the day was over, but it was now late, and Miranda was already falling asleep. They would both have to wait until morning. One was presenting her wedding present to Miranda, and the other was calling on her to help solve the big fat riddle still hanging over them from their holiday in Italy. Who the dickens was Maggie McIntyre, and what had really happened in Venice? *

Then it was Monday morning, and their mini honeymoon was drawing to an end. Miranda was dressed and made–up, looking as though butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, as she observed a very sleepy looking Andy across the breakfast table. She’d called down to reception for copious amounts of good coffee and a basket of fruit and pastries, and the tempting smell had finally dragged Andrea away from her pillows.

“You’re up, and packed already!” said Andy, as she looked in surprise at Miranda’s neat as a pin luggage stacked ready by the door.

“Yes, having wasted yesterday morning, I wanted to get a head-start on today. I have had an idea.”

“What, honey? Please pass me the coffee. Thanks.”

“Why don’t we drive north into Maine and have lunch with Lee, Gloria and your Momma. It wouldn’t take forever, and if we take one more day off, I’m sure I can ask Cara to stay with the twins tonight after she and Geoff meet up to take them home.”

“That sounds fun, but any particular reason?”

Miranda delicately peeled herself an orange. 

“Yes, I really want to interrogate Gloria again, about who the woman really was whom you and I met in Italy. You know, I think she was fibbing when she said she’d invented the name Maggie McIntyre herself. Or at least, she wasn’t telling the whole truth.”**

“Miranda, I was going to ask you the very same thing! Two minds with but a single thought. Can you call them up and see if it fits in with their plans?”

“Sorry, darling, but I went ahead already while you were asleep, and yes, they would love to see us.”

“Then I will pack and shower and be ready to roll shortly. But first, I have a little present for you. Wait here please.”

Andy left the table and went over to her luggage, where she pulled out a parcel, nicely wrapped in silver paper. 

“This is my wedding present for you.”

Miranda looked happily curious, and started to unwrap her surprise gift. She pulled out a pristine copy of a novel, properly bound and looking for all the world as though it was hot off the press.

“What? Darling, this is your book, your first published novel! How did you manage to get it formatted and printed so soon? It looks wonderful. I love the cover!”

“It’s published alright, but this is the only copy in existence. I wrote the book for you. It is a love-letter to you, telling our story in a fictionalised way. But I don’t want anyone else to read it. It’s intimate and sexy, and just expresses my love for you.”

“But it was at least three months’ work. Surely you want to distribute it more widely. It could be a best seller. Don’t waste it just on me!”

“Waste? No, there will be plenty of time for me to write other books, but this one is for you. Even the twins won’t get to read it, until they are maybe fifty years older, and you and I have passed on.”

Miranda opened the book and looked at the dedication.

“Oh Andy,” she whispered. “What you say, and how you say it is so beautiful. You’ll make me smudge my mascara if I’m not careful.”

“Well, I mean what I wrote there. Every word.”

“I shall treasure this forever, as I will you. Thank you Andrea, for my beautiful, unique wedding present. And when we go home, you will find a brand new Apple Mac waiting for you in your writing room. You’ll obviously need it more than ever now, if you have to start up your next story from scratch again.”

Andy smiled her thanks, and kissed Miranda’s brow. 

“Give me fifteen minutes, and I’ll be ready to join you in the car.” 

Then she disappeared into the bathroom.

*As told in “Miranda’s Enchanted April.”  
** As told in “Miranda’s Wedding.”


	3. The Fifth Dimension

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Andy and Miranda take a trip to visit Gloria and Lee, where Lee does most of the talking!

Having been a veritable lark that morning, Miranda quickly realised she had a large sleep deficiency to make up, and was more than happy to turn the driver’s seat over to Andy. Andrea loved driving the Porsche, and Miranda loved to indulge her. The darling girl had few expensive tastes and so was very difficult to spoil, but she did like their snazzy sports car, and was certainly an excellent driver. 

Miranda fed Lee and Gloria’s Maine address into the GPS system, and left Andy to it. It was only two hours’ drive, maximum, from their current location in the woods to their home by the sea, and Gloria had called to confirm they were expecting them for lunch. 

Lunch? Well, today Miranda felt she might just about cope with solid food. As Andrea drove them away down the long forest track on to the metalled road, she set her seat right back, put on her shades, and closed her eyes.

“Just having a nap, sweetie,” she explained.

“Of course, Miri. If anyone’s earned it, you have.”

And that was the last Miranda knew of their journey until Andy drew the car to a halt in front of a set of old painted wooden gates two hours later. 

The women inside the house had obviously heard their car arrive, for the front door burst open and Momma and Gloria came down the steps to meet them with arms wide open. Miranda shook her feathers and managed to get rid of the “Where in the world am I?” look of someone who has slept through a hundred miles of country. 

As they both stepped out of the car they could hear the sea crashing on nearby rocks, and smell the salt in the air. Andy had been driving along the coastal lane for half a mile already, but the proximity to the sea still surprised and delighted her. She greeted Gloria.

“Wow! This is an older version of your house at Laguna. How clever of you! Did you design them both?”

“This was Lee’s family vacation home, left to her by her parents. We’ve just updated it through the years,” said Gloria, welcoming them in. They all exchanged hugs, and Andy especially fondled her grandmother with a loving squeeze, while surreptitiously noticing with relief how friendly rather than passionate was the brief hug between Miranda and Gloria.

“Come in. Lee is confined to the sofa at present, I’m afraid. The wedding shenanigans finally did for her hip.”

“Well, we did watch you both dancing round the tent-poles in the marquee!” laughed Miranda. “But I’m so sorry she’s in pain.”

They all went through to the sitting room, as cluttered up with magazines and paperwork as the ladies’ other house in California, and Gloria picked up several piles and made room for them on the sofa. Momma seemed oblivious of the muddle though, and actually sat down on top of an old pile of New Yorkers.

“So, what have you two little darlings been up to since you skedaddled off from the wedding reception?” she asked.

“Nothing fit to tell someone’s Grandma,” replied Andy, “Though poor Miranda had a bad time yesterday morning. Over-excitement wreaked havoc with her digestive system for a while.”

“Better now?” asked Gloria.

“Absolutely,” Miranda reassured her, then changed the subject. “You know, it must be twelve years since I last came up here, when I bought Patricia off you. I’d forgotten how glorious the scenery is in this corner of Maine.” 

Even though she was chair-bound, Lee took charge of proceedings.

“Andy, honey, could you kindly give a hand to Gloria to bring in the lunch things? Then us older ladies can interrogate Miranda here some more. You must have had the shortest honeymoon in history, so I bet it was busy. I want to hear all the details.”

Andy laughed and said, “Oh, our real honeymoon was in Italy, this last break was simply a sleepover by comparison. Let’s have lunch and then we want to talk to you some more about April and what happened then.”

She had paved the way nicely for Miranda to take up their quest for information, she thought, and managed to deflect from this cross-examination about their sexual activities. She didn’t need to talk about what Miranda had done to her in bed. She felt it still in every stretched muscle! 

Gloria cleared a large table and then threw a cloth over it. As they gathered round, she served up a delicious sea-food salad, accompanied by hot biscuits and ginger beer floats. As they all ate, they looked out over the ocean, and Andy could see how much her granny was enjoying being above the crashing tide below. Miranda ate cautiously, avoiding the floats, but all her insides stayed in their rightful place happily.

Momma was so enjoying her little vacation she was like a young girl, with shining eyes and crisp white curls. Both Lee and she were in their mid-eighties, but Andy could imagine what they’d both been like when young, full of piss and vinegar, as Momma would say. 

They were a role model for gay women, each in their own way. But one had lived the life she’d wanted, out and proud of it, while the other had been silent about being gay until this very year, enduring more than half a century of virtual purdah, not expressing who she really was. The mid-west was a barren wilderness for gay women during most of Momma’s life, and even her own darling daughter hadn’t known or understood what she was denied in the way of true love.

When they finished lunch, they all went through to a sun room, even closer to the water, and relaxed over coffee and little macaroons.

Miranda began to talk. “We thought we should tell you the whole story about the mysterious person we met in Italy. It’s been troubling Andrea and me ever since, and I reckon when we saw you in New York, there just wasn’t the time to discuss it properly. You are our only lead, Gloria. Maybe between us all we can unpack what happened.”

Andy picked up the story. “Miranda first met Maggie in Rome. She met her at the Trevi Fountain, and she definitely knew about us. She asked after me, and as good as said you’d told her about us. Then I met her in a restaurant and she gave us a flyer for a Monteverdi concert.”

Miranda carried on. “We didn’t see her at the concert, nor in Florence, but she popped up again in Venice, and that was when things became even stranger. She left a message for us at our hotel. How did she know where we were staying? Then she showed us round the Friari Church, and even sat with us through a recital.”

“But that was when even stranger things happened,” Andy chipped in. “The whole place started to quiver and shake, and I could feel Miranda being pulled by a weird force out of the present moment. I grabbed her arm as she nearly lost consciousness, and it took all my strength to hold onto her.”

“It really felt like I was being pulled back into the sixteenth century. Nothing like that has ever happened to me before, but the age of the building, the deep layers of history almost swallowed me up,” confirmed Miranda.

“Oh my word!” said Gloria, looking very troubled. “So what happened then? What happened to your version of Maggie McIntyre?”

“We felt we had to get out. We left her there and slipped away from the concert. Miranda hadn’t eaten, and she gets sick when she fasts, so I took her to a trattoria and fed her pasta and ice-cream until she felt better."

“Gloria,” said Miranda,” Andy and I definitely did meet a person called Maggie, who said she knew us through you. She can’t just be someone you invented. It makes no sense. What’s the real explanation, eh?”

As Gloria stayed silent and seemed to be lost for words, Lee chipped in, and began to speak.

“Miranda, honey. It makes sense if you are prepared to set aside pre-conceptions about how things work. If you ask me, I reckon it’s all about the fifth dimension.”

“Fifth dimension? I thought there were only three!”

“No, just think about it. Normal life, the physical world we can see and touch, this exists in three dimensions sure enough. But we also have Time, the fourth dimension, altering every cell in our bodies, and every molecule on earth each micro-second. We live our whole lives in the fourth dimension. We are all slightly different people now from the ones we were before lunch. Everything moves, nothing stands still. 

“Because we are limited people with eyes only in the front of our faces, we think we are facing the future, but in fact we are blind to what lies ahead. We are actually looking back at our past all the time, through our memories and experiences. And our DNA, what makes us who we are, we share that with our ancestors. The experts can trace it back more than twenty thousand years.”

“Go on,” said Miranda, with a dubious tone to her voice. She wondered where Lee was heading.

“I believe, because you naturally have extreme sensitivity to sound and colour, and to the vibrations of music, in that recital in the ancient Venetian Church, you slipped backwards through this fourth dimension, and because you and Andy are so at one with each other, she fell after you for a few seconds. It’s happened before. I am sure it often happens in fact, when people think they’ve seen a ghost. I believe it’s like a stutter in time. It backfires for a moment, if you like.”

“I still don’t understand. Has it ever happened to you, Lee? You are very sensitive aesthetically. Are you speaking from experience?”

Gloria looked over to her partner. “Tell them about Andersonville.”

“OK, I will, though there was nothing artistic about it. Years ago in the 1980s I went with Gloria on a vacation, a road-trip round Georgia. We visited the civil war cemetery in Andersonville, not too far from the FDR little Whitehouse. It was a pleasant day, a warm sunny day, and the place was well-kept with all the grass mown and the trees clipped. But in the civil war the site had been a prison camp for Union soldiers. It seems they were penned up, concentrated in just a few acres, without proper shelter or food, or clean water. More than thirteen thousand men died there of wounds, or starvation, or typhus fever. It was a terrible scandal, even then.

“There was nothing when we visited to starkly remind one of those days, just an information board in the visitors’ center. Like I said, it’s now a pleasant memorial park with a hiking trail. 

“But I felt absolute horror and sadness in that place. It hit me like a wall of ice, and the temperature dropped twenty degrees. The unhappiness and misery just sprang up out of the ground and enveloped me. 

“I still can’t explain it. But I was taken back to the time of the Civil War, just for a few seconds. Gloria grabbed me, and stopped me fainting. It wasn’t down to music, or anything artistic, but it has an uncanny resemblance to what you say you experienced, Miranda.”

“Wow,” said Andy, “And you Gloria, did you feel anything as well?”

“No, not as strongly as Lee. But the place did give me a sense of gloom and the look in her eye told me something was really not good. Like you did with Miranda, I decided to get her away.”

“I see,” said Miranda cautiously. “OK, perhaps a wrinkle in time, or a stutter as you call it. But what about Maggie McIntyre, and the fifth dimension, what is that all about?”

Gloria let Lee do the talking again. She was so much more articulate when it came to big ideas, even though Gloria earned her living through words.

“I call it the fifth dimension when creativity blossoms. It’s where the creative spirit in us meets the art we create. It’s where a composer hears his or her music, it’s where I see my paintings come to life, and it’s where authors’ characters live and have their reality.”

“You mean made-up stuff, make-believe?” said Momma, slightly sceptical. “I never had the talent for that, unlike little Catfish here. She was making up fantastical stories as soon as she could toddle. I always told her they’d get her into deep trouble one day! But I guess she’s in a place now where she can handle it.”

Lee persisted. “Think about characters in books and plays we all know and love, people who have enriched our lives, whom we can’t imagine getting along without.”

“Hamlet? King Lear, Elizabeth Bennet, David Copperfield?” ventured Miranda.

“Jane Eyre? Anne of Green Gables?” added Andy.

“Yes, good writers can conjure up wonderful, fully formed people. But they all live in the fifth dimension. Someone simply made them up as Momma says, someone created them.”

“So they can never become real, three dimensional people. They can’t leave the fifth dimension. Like us, they are sadly trapped in their own world. I can understand that,” said Andy.

“Ah, but supposing, just occasionally the creator can slip from here into the fifth dimension, meet their own characters, wouldn’t that be fun?”

Miranda remembered all the art in Florence, Rome and Venice. 

“Like Raphael putting his own face in the crowds in his paintings?”

“Yes, just like that. Do you know the Inspector Morse novels? When they were filmed, the author, Colin Dexter walked on as an extra in each episode, just for fun.”

“So are you saying Maggie McIntyre might be one of Gloria’s characters who has come alive? That’s ridiculous.” Miranda remained unconvinced.

“Or vice versa,” said Lee enigmatically. “Gloria thought she invented her, as a female detective, but suppose it was actually the other way round? Supposing we are all just living in someone else’s dream, in their fifth dimension? Isn’t that what fiction is all about? Why it feeds our imagination so much.”

Andy shivered and tried to get her head round this scary idea. “Look, I have just written a book, just for Miranda, about our relationship, our love affair. But I’ve fictionalised it. It’s partly true, partly conjured up in my brain. The main characters are inventions of my own. But I couldn’t stop them coming, I couldn’t prevent them saying things, doing things I didn’t expect. They did have a life of their own.”

“Then you were in the zone. You were definitely working in the fifth dimension, and the characters you met there, you had the skill to bring them to life. That’s your gift, and you have to use it wisely. 

I paint, or I still would if only this damn arthritis would let me, you write, the twins composed their lovely waltz, Gloria can write acerbically witty columns, and Miranda understands and expresses the subtleties of style better than anyone else in the world. We all create, and when we do we are firmly in the fifth dimension.”

“But back to Maggie McIntyre. So was she real or not?” 

“It depends what you mean by ‘real’. Maybe she was, or maybe someone else, not even Gloria, but another person, maybe they created her. Sometimes lots of influences go to make up a personality.”

“It’s a very deep and troublesome idea,” sighed Andy. 

Lee snorted. “My dear, I am eighty-four next month, and I am still tussling with stuff like this, every day of my life. Don’t run away from the challenge of thinking round difficult ideas. You were given brains between your ears, so carry on using them.

I’m not saying my explanation for what you experienced is right or wrong. Just think about it, that’s all. Exploring Ideas can’t kill you, nor using your imagination. You two, Miranda and Andy, you have a long joyous marriage ahead of you. Make the most of it. Keep creating and keep thinking.”

Andy quoted one of her favorite Shakespearean verses. “We are such stuff as dreams are made of, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.” 

“Exactly. Now I hope very much you two dear souls are staying the night with us. We have a beautiful en-suite guest room upstairs with a view of the ocean.”  
“Thank you, Lee. We’d love to. Cara and the twins don’t expect us home until tomorrow evening.” Miranda said, and was pleased she had remembered to call them all that morning and set this up.

“Good,” said Gloria, “Oh, and there’s something important we forgot to tell you! We’re getting married as well, as soon as Lee has her hip fixed. We’ve booked ourselves into your Windhover Inn for August.”

“Wonderful news!” And so the heavy conversation about metaphysical speculation floated away into a cloud of love and laughter. 

In later years, Miranda and Andy rarely referred back to the explanations Lee had put forward for their strange experiences in Italy. In future, Maggie McIntyre faded into a distant memory, for she never bothered them in person again. But they never quite forgot her, always felt she could have been a friend, and that there was certainly nothing to fear from her dropping into their holiday in Italy. 

As Miranda’s sabbatical drew to a close, she psyched herself up to return to the all-encompassing world of Runway, but her old insecurities, even her old cruelties, and her need to control softened dramatically. Through the summer she took classes in modern art, which taught her there were many different ways to look at objects and people, in more than two or even three dimensions, but she couldn’t say Picasso and his friends were ever really her thing! She still preferred her lovely little Rubens drawing of ‘the fat lady with the big bottom’ hanging in their bedroom.

Andy simply cracked on and started to write her second novel, on the beautiful, elegant computer bought for her by her always generous wife. Lee’s prediction was correct. They had many long and happy years of marriage ahead of them. Oh, and what seemed far too many crazy weddings to attend!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author’s note:  
> So, we may not have totally solved the mystery of Maggie McIntyre. But she was named after a character in George Eliot’s “Mill on the Floss” which may be a clue as to who she might be. If you’ve enjoyed these seventeen Miranda and Andy stories, and would like to read something similar outside fanfiction, please follow Maggie on her Facebook page, Maggie McIntyre author, and from there check out her website www.maggiemcintyreauthor,com which will be launched very soon. There will be exciting news posted soon on both these places.   
> Meanwhile, Andy and Miranda will be back here again shortly in a new series, following their adventures and the ups and downs of family life.

**Author's Note:**

> This is the last story in my series Miranda's Sabbatical. Thanks to everyone who has kept faith with all the tales. More stories will emerge about their life together before long I'm sure. If you would like to read more writing from "Millgirl", she publishes under Maggie McIntyre these days, and Maggie has her own facebook page with news of other books and links to new projects.


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